Article excerpt

The name Pablo Picasso evokes images of bizarre portraits with
eyeballs where ears should be and surreal faces quartered in red and
green cubes.

And, there's "Guernica."

The forbidding painting of war shows wounded horses braying,
terrified people running through chaos. So, Mr. Picasso is not the
first guy you'd think of as the poster child of artists for peace.

But his jarring work was meant to promote just that. When Nazi
officials asked him, "Did you do this?" the painter answered, "No,
you did."

If one of the goals of art is to foster reflection on the social
condition, what better place to showcase a thought-provoking artist
like Picasso than war-torn Colombia?

That was Sylvestre Verger's rationale in 1998 when he proposed
bringing the first Picasso exhibit ever to Bogot. But, as soon as
the French art exhibit producer started asking museums to lend their
precious masterpieces, he realized that portraying Colombia as a
safe venue would be as tough as decoding some of Picasso's Blue
Period paintings.

Still, Mr. Verger persisted with the "Picasso in Bogot"
exhibit, because he wanted the painter's work to "have the impact
the artist meant it to have, in a country where it's needed."

"This was a man opposed to all war," says Verger. "And his work
here in Colombia is a statement for peace."

Armed with these apparently quixotic ideas , Verger began asking
museums to loan Picassos to Colombia's National Museum in 1998,
after he did an exhibition there of pre-Impressionist Eugne Boudin.
But Verger says that "only one in 100 said yes." Some said they
needed their Picassos for new millennium shows. A few, said that he
hadn't given enough notice. Others said they didn't want to risk
their paintings "in a country like Colombia."

Pablo Vallecilla, Latin American art expert with Sotheby's New
York explains that despite best intentions, big-name art
institutions are just not going to relinquish prized masterpieces
without some serious convincing. "Unfortunately, museums have to
make decisions on such important collections through their boards of
directors, and members of these boards may only know what appears in
the press about a given country," he says.

"And what you see in the press about Colombia is embarrassingly
frightening," adds Mr. …